Tangleweed
by UnluckyAmulet
Summary: It is hard to pity those who have everything. It is harder to live when you have nothing. Merope Gaunt. Tom. Cecilia.


Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter

Just an angsty story that came to mind one day when I was reading some other Harry Potter fanfics. I think Merope is quite a complex and misunderstand character, and also a terrible sad one. So I wrote this. Rated T for general angst. Onesided Merope/Tom (obviously) and very VERY small hint of Cecilia/Merope. (Because hate is love.)

Enjoy!

* * *

When Merope wakes up, curled up on the floor, she has forgotten about what took place the previous day.

The first thing she notices when her senses gradually return to her is the silence. Normally she would have woken long ago, to her father yelling or Morfin's insane shrilling cackles as he touches his snakes. No doubt one of them would have stated screaming at her to make breakfast, possibly accompanied by something being thrown at her until she had the sense to get up -immediately- before the objects became hexes.

She doesn't really know what to do.

Merope paces the house, running from room to room, breathing gradually growing louder and louder to her own ears, her heart pounding and her head thumping as she runs faster and faster, panic settling in, because Merope's never truly been alone before and it's scares her, because the there is no escaping the silence.

Unable to stand the silence, Merope wrenches open the back door and steps tentatively into the jungle of a back garden. The smells seem to overwhelm her, the smell of flowers and fresh air and a thousand other scents she cannot really identify. The long grass tickle the soles of her cracked, dirty feet as she steps across it, making indents of where she goes in the sea of green. Weeds are running rampant, ivy crawls up the house, burrowing its way beneath any rotten wood that it can. Thorns scratch at her skin, but she stays outside, ignoring the small snakes that slither automatically towards her. She is a parcelmouth, but the snakes usually don't have much to say to her. She used to whisper to them, warning them to get away from the house. She stopped doing that when she realized that they never heeded her warnings.

Then, she hears the familiar clip-clop of horses and the jingle of bells, and she feels like time had abruptly halted. Like a magnet, like the helpless snakes, she gravitates towards the sound, peering through the bushes. She has done this enough times to know where the best gaps are without being spotted.

Not that Thomas Riddle ever looks her way, of course.

She can just make out his profile, and her mouth becomes dry. Her tongue darts out from between her lips, licking them, her eyes wide as she drinks in the sight of him. And then, the moment is broken by a tinkling laugh, _her_ laugh, and Merope recoils from the bush as though she has been stung.

Merope _aches_, deep down inside, an ache that she is unfamiliar with- an ache for someone to _see_ her, to know her. For a connection, she supposes. Because Tom Riddle is beautiful in a way that makes her breath catch in her throat and her lungs feel strangely empty.

She wonders if that's how Cecilia makes Tom feel when she looks at him with those huge, liquid eyes and feels mildly sick. 

* * *

Merope _hates _Cecilia. Hates her with a vicious intensity she didn't know she had in her. Or maybe she had always just been too meek, too repressed to ever really feel before. Somewhere deep inside, that it's not just Cecilia she hates, it's everything. It's her father, her brother, the filthy shack they live in. She hates the way the other villagers whisper about them, looking down their noses at them, judging eyes gleaming with malice. The way her father ranted on about blood purity and muggles and mud-bloods, the dead snakes that hung around the house, courtesy of Morfin.

She even hates Mother, sometimes, for dying in the first place and leaving her to be crushed beneath father's disdain and abuse. They buried her on a snowy day, and soon her grave became blanketed by the stuff, and now Merope cannot remember exactly where her mother was buried. The garden has swallowed her in its wildness. It's like their mother never even existed- as though Merope and Morfin both just emerged one day from the shadows and then didn't go away again.

It hurts so deeply sometimes that Merope has forgotten how to live without the pain, like living with an amputated arm.

So it is with relative ease that Merope makes the choice, steels herself to making Amortentia, once father and brother are both gone. Mother did at least teach her one thing- how to make potions. Merope has concocted many before now. Mostly, they're for helping her sleep, or to help her forget things. Make her memories misty and blurred to dull the shame of remembering properly.

She has nobody left, and a person who has nothing and nobody is in danger of becoming one themselves. Merope is almost frightened when old bruises on her body disappear- as though she will fade right along with them. So she does something she hasn't done since that snowy day where she forgot how to cry- she finds that hope, that feeling that's been the one thing she has clung to for what feels like forever, and clings to it.

As she dips a bottle into the cauldron, making it fill with the pearly gloop, she breathes in the intoxicating scent. It doesn't occur to her that what she is doing is unfair, not right then anyway. Her life has been the polar opposite of _fair_; in fact, the whole notion of the word is laughable if it weren't so terribly real. It's her _life_, and now that father and brother aren't around to tell her how worthless, how useless she is, she begins to realize that the worst thing she could do would be to go back to her shadowy little corner, to curl up and simply fade right out of existence. God knows she's wished she could before, wished hard enough that if she closed her eyes and blocked her ears for a moment, she could _almost_ trick herself into thinking it was granted.

She has one chance, and she will not let it pass her by.

In Merope's mind, it is justified. Not because she hates Cecilia, but because Cecilia doesn't deserve Tom.

She doesn't deserve him. Merope watches her whenever she drives past the house, and it kills her to see Tom touch her, hearing him calling her _Darling_ and staring at her with those beautiful eyes. Cecilia is a pretty girl- Merope isn't silly enough to deny it- all soft ringlets, rosebud mouth, flawless skin and those wide, doe-like eyes. But Merope can see what Tom cannot- she can see the insincerity of Cecilia's smiles, the mean, calculating look in her innocent eyes. She laughs in all the right places, compliments him and strokes his ego. Her hands, in delicate little velvet gloves, curl possessively around his arm. When she laughs, she throws back her head and does it loud (but always sweetly) enough to make sure others can hear it. Men are so easily fooled by beauty, and Merope wants to call to Tom, wants to warn him- can't he _see_? She's nothing but a fake, putting on this ingénue act, all dressed up in her frills and lacy dresses, because she wants Tom, he's another object to add to her collection of beautiful things. She doesn't see Tom, not really. She only likes him because he's rich and handsome, not because she _loves_ him, not like how Merope does. She _loves_ Tom, he is her entire world, he's _everything_...

How can Cecilia just get everything, when Merope gets nothing?

_She won't have Tom_, Merope tells herself, pouring religiously over the moth-eaten potions books, determined to make absolutely sure, her eyes watering_. She can't. I love him. Nothing matters more to me then Tom. Nothing.__.  
_  
This word feels strange to hear even in her own mind. Love used to be an alien concept to Merope- the stuff of fairytales, a trick of the mind. Mother might have loved her once. The memory of her is so faint that all Merope can properly recall is a long tangle of dark hair and the smell of tulips.

I love him

Merope tries to remember if tulips were one of the scents of the Amortentia. 

* * *

Merope feels strangely like a child as she holds out the lemonade. She hopes Tom won't notice the fact the drink smells of the things he loves- or if he does, he won't be suspicious. Her two hands reach out, up to him, trying to look as non-threatening and inviting, barely withholding her desperation, her hope.

He takes it with a polite, uncertain smile. He lifts it to his lips- he must be thirsty, taking long, greedy sips, his pinkie arched as he tilts the cracked glass back, draining it of every last drop, his throat twitching as the liquid slides down his throat.

Merope smiles and she has to touch her mouth before she realizes she's doing it.

Tom looks at her, and his eyes seem glazed for a second, before they light up, and Merope has never seen somebody look at her with such longing, such amazement. With such love.

"Forgive me," Tom murmurs, dropping the glass as his concentration focuses fully on Merope. She barely notices it. "I don't believe I know your name."

"My name is Merope."

"Merope." Tom repeats, saying her name as though he is tasting it, savoring the way it sounds. "It's beautiful."

Merope knows she is not pretty. She isn't particularly clever or charming or brave or any of those things. She never really thought before about what she was, or who she was for that matter. So it only really occurs to her now to wonder at all these words that have been used for other people when she looks at Tom.

Because, for a moment, she actually believes him.

* * *

Tom's smile breaks her, in the end.

Merope never intended to hurt him. She loved Tom. When he proposed to her, doing it in the proper way, down on one knee, a ring that glittered like his eyes as he presented it to her, she wondered for a moment if it was possible to die from too much happiness, to be given so much joy at once. She said yes, and Tom slipped the ring on her finger like she was a princess.

He was everything she ever wanted.

But it wasn't really Tom. It was Amortentia telling him that she was his, the person just for him. And all Merope had ever truly wanted was to be loved. The artificial love was magical, the first time she had ever truly felt blessed to be a witch. But Merope knew it couldn't last forever. Not because her potion couldn't, but because Merope could hide no longer. Tom saw her, or so she thought, and she wanted to free him. So they could both be free.

But when Tom looked at her as though she was a stranger, the illusion shattered. Because that's all it was- an illusion.

"But I love you..." Merope said, and she could hear her whole world come crashing to pieces around her. "I love you!"

All Tom does is stare at her and back away, hand blindly groping for the door handle. He recoils from Merope's tears like they are poisonous. The love in his eyes is gone, and Merope is suddenly struck by how distant Tom can look. As remote and lovely as the moon's reflection. But no less cold.

"I'm going..." burbles Tom, a panicked, desperate look in his eyes."You're mad. I- I, I'm going home. This is a trick. I-I'm leaving. Back to my parents and to Cecilia. You...you keep away from me."

Merope's tears suddenly halt, because she hears that name again, and it makes her angry. Even now, even though he has a pregnant wife who loves him, would do anything for him, and all he can think about is _her_? What has _she_ ever done to deserve Tom's affections? Yes, she's pretty- but she's also a lot of others things, cold and rude and dull being the first things Merope could say. But she doesn't say this, she says the one thing she knows will hurt Tom. Because sometimes, you have to hurt people to make them see.

"You won't find her." Merope says, because she knows now that Tom will never yield to her begging. He's ready to abandon his pregnant wife, and her tears will do nothing.

"What do you mean?" Tom is nearly shouting. "What have you done to her?"

_To HER?_

"She is married." replied Merope, softly. "To a Duke. A few months ago. She's gone, Tom. And she isn't coming back."

A bitter smile flickers at the edges of Merope's mouth, and Tom flinches like she has slapped him.

_You were much better off without her._Tom leaves.

Strangely, Merope feels nothing except emptiness.

She looks up at the sky, and sees the snow begin to fall.

* * *

Now she is alone again, staggering through the streets with a swollen belly, her body rendered alien to her. She has always been skinny, and this protuberance from her stomach looks ridiculous on her, like she has a boulder strapped to her midriff. She sold Slytherin's locket a few days ago- for ten galleons. She didn't care she was being robbed. It burned her flesh like it had been in a fire, and selling it felt like a strange, small revenge against father.

She wonders why she still calls him that.

Somehow, instinctively, Merope knows that she has not got much time left to live. She finds that she doesn't care, even with the tiny life flickering inside her. Merope is not stupid or sentimental enough to believe that she would make a good mother- she couldn't even keep Tom, couldn't even get him to love her back without that potion that was too sweet to be real.

Tears of frustration and self-pity spring up in Merope's eyes, slithering down her cheeks as a harsh wind whips up at that moment. The cramp in her stomach is getting worse and she leans against a wall, panting. Then, her blood runs cold as she feels wetness beneath her dress and a shallow gasp turns into a hiss of pain. Her waters have broken, and she has nowhere to go. She doesn't know what to do- she has never been to a doctor and she is so blinded by the abrupt, harsh pain of the contractions she can't think. She vomits in the street, spitting to get out the taste, tears streaming down her face now. Soon, however, the tears become indistinguishable from the sudden torrent of rain that seems to erupt from the sky, and a few bitter sounds escape from Merope's mouth, drowned out by an ominous crack of thunder.

She runs.

"Hello?" asks a scruffy girl with a frown, opening the door to the orphanage and pulling a face as the frigid rainwater speckles her face. "Who could be calling at this time of night? Whoever you- good god!"

Merope is in too much pain to really register what happens after the orphanage door opens. She is torn between gasping and screaming, and reflects that she must look uglier than ever, blood on her legs and her hair plastered to her forehead with sweat as she writhes and screams and sobs. Her son is born with little fuss- these women don't look it, but they are capable. They tell Merope she's going to be all right, hundreds of girls turn up like this, her baby will be fine.

She is too exhausted to care anymore. Too exhausted by it all.

As Merope lies on the filthy table, covered in blood and sweat while strangers mop up her son, she thinks, strangely, of Cecilia. She wonders what Cecilia might look like now- she looks the same, probably. People like her are always beautiful. They are the kind that are saved, the ones that people pity, just because she was beautiful. She has everything, yet somehow it's never quite enough for people like her.

Merope fled the village soon after Tom left her, but she had heard that Tom ran to his parent's house after finding out that Cecilia's marriage had not been a lie- that chasing her would be a high task. Merope might once have found comfort in the fact that Tom doesn't love Cecilia enough to go and save her, but now she realizes the emptiness of it all.

The irony is not lost on her. Merope Gaunt, descendent of Salazar Slytherin, about to meet her end, lying on a filthy table in a muggle orphanage. Merope has seen enough of her own blood to know there is nothing pure or special about it. It's just blood, after all.

When death finally comes, Merope thinks that at least she has finally escaped. She is free from her miserable life.

They bury her in a churchyard. They don't know her name, so they bury her as "Mrs. Riddle". Those who pass the tombstone wonder who she might have been.

A year after her death, a tulip blooms on Merope's grave.

It is enough. 

* * *

Note: Just as a little fact: Yellow tulips symbolize 'hopeless love'.

Reviews would be lovely.


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